Inertial sensors, such as micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) devices, are used to detect motion in a wide variety of modern machinery, including various types of land vehicles, aircraft, and watercraft. Such vehicles often include subsystems known as “inertial measurement units” (IMUs) which contain the inertial sensors themselves, along with the various electronic components, often mounted to a circuit board, used to analyze the signals generated by the inertial sensors and interface with other electrical systems in the vehicles.
Typically, IMUs include MEMS inertial sensors arranged to detect the motion of the vehicle relative to three mutually orthogonal axes (i.e., x-, y-, and z-axes). As such, in order to work properly, the MEMS devices are generally arranged such that the “sense axis” (i.e., the axis relative to which motion is detected) of each is orthogonal to the sense axes of the other similar MEMS devices.
The installation of the MEMS devices in IMUs conventionally involves mounting the MEMS devices directly to the circuit board with little regard for the exact arrangement of the sense axes of the devices except in a general sense. After the IMUs have been assembled, the mounting of the MEMS devices often requires substantial adjustments (e.g., typically through software and precision rate table use) to ensure the orthogonal arrangement of the sense axes. These adjustments may be very time consuming and significantly increase the overall manufacturing costs of the IMUs.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a method and system for mounting inertial sensors in IMUs that facilitates the proper installation of the inertial sensors such that the sense axes are property arranged. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description of the invention and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background of the invention.